I watched this on youtube and maybe the English translation was a bit off because I'm confused as to why Xiu Xiu…
Gosh Ikr! I watched it on yt too but I used different subs & what I think happened was after XiuXiu is lied to & has a one-night stand w/the 1st peddler guy, he returns to the headquarters & tells comrades about it/how to coerce her (since the 2nd guy even came prepared w/an apple too). So then XiuXiu is basically visited by unknown officials who keep her hopes up with lies of helping arrange her going back home in exchange for sex. I don't think XiuXiu is visited by the same guys twice and that's why she's so compliant and they're able to get away with so much BS & have her naively thinking the more men she sleeps with=more help. I also think LaoJin doesn't step in at first because XiuXiu is convinced this plan will work and maybe he thought she would come to her senses eventually or that she'd start to hate him if he interfered & would accuse him of wanting to trap her there? (I'm sure LoaJin has her best interests in mind since he goes out of his way to bring her water to drink & bathe in after visits since it seems to clean away her "impurity" and remind her of home. Some bible themes here with this "baptizing" & forbidden fruit..) Overtime, XiuXiu becomes subconsciously aware that she really may NEVER return home & she becomes numb to it all/starts to take her anger out on LaoJin so I guess that's why towards the end the scumbags don't even bother to put in actual effort to lie or visit at times when she's even AWAKE! I'm thinking XiuXiu started to finally open her eyes when she has her traumatic abortion & hears the nurses mutter about her being the 5th girl that month :( I was crying so bad when XiuXiu finally realized LaoJin was the only one that whole time who could genuinely help her & the last thing he could do for her was put her out of the misery. The final scene where she restores herself to her original look before dying was so powerful & tragic.
Does it have an open ending or does it have a pure happy ending, if I may ask? :-)
The ending isn't the pure or happiest for the common viewer (i think it even pissed some off actually lol) but for me it's a pretty straight-forward & bittersweet ending.
I thought that it was very interesting that each episode had a different director. Granted, there's a few episodes that are rather forgettable & kinda bland but it's whatever. I do want to say it took me a while to bring myself to complete all 13 episodes though (Netflix didn't have episode descriptions & I didn't really know what to expect for every episode so I just watched them in chronological order whenever I had spare time or felt like watching a little horror story. This also made it really easy to forget about the show unfortunately since I didn't find it very bingeworthy). Some episodes dragged on & felt like hours while others had me hooked and made the 40-ish minutes fly by! I believe the only episodes I didn't like were 3, 4, 11 & 13 which isn't even half the episodes so it's OK. I understand how maybe the stories being so open-ended and ambiguous might turn off some people but this was worth the watch since it reminded me of the live-action Goosebumps series from the 90s (which is also on Netflix)!
Yea this was ok at best. I'm just happy it didn't stretch out so long to where it lost it's novelty, but I was also kinda left disappointed because I felt this lacked a little "omph" or something. Nevertheless, it's not bad it's just ok.
This was really good. I like dramas with darker tones and ofc I LOVE me some Vaness Wu <3 A majority of this show had me hooked with anticipation.. to the point where I was almost impatient lol I agree this drama is a classic! Even tho it had it's fair share of cliches of the time, Autumn's Concerto still managed to bring something original & fresh to the table. (Mu Cheng is still worst girl tho, but I still loved her actress she was so pretty)